


a rich and steady time

by amosanguis



Series: baseball horrorthon 2k18 [7]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Accelerated Aging, Alternate Universe - Arachnids, Blood and Gore, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Plugs, Siblicide, i cringed writing this y'all shit's fucked up, sexual cannibalism, shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-13 21:02:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16479722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or hatch.Anthony is big and powerful and Kris knows just as soon as they shake hands that this is the sire he’s been looking for.





	a rich and steady time

**Author's Note:**

> \--Title from _Charlotte's Web_ by E. B. White  
>  \--"sling" is an abbreviation for "spiderlings".

-z-

 

Anthony is big and powerful and Kris _knows_ just as soon as they shake hands that this is the sire he’s been looking for.

They’re both on suppressants – all arachnids were, they grew too big and too fast and were far more volatile than the non-arachnids to _not_ be on suppressants – but as soon as their skin touches, it’s like fire racing up and through him just under his skin and Kris _shivers_.

Anthony does, too.

 

 

Volatile.

It was strange word used to describe the imperative to breed, Kris thinks.

Then again, as Kris watches Schwarbs sidle up close to Anthony, Kris feels a spike of bloodlust and possessiveness and Kris has to force himself to turn away and breathe deep and remind himself that he likes Kyle, that _Kyle is_ _team_ and _team is_ _family_ and _family can’t be killed_ – even for a mate and especially a mate-not-yet-claimed.

Kyle was a young arachnid, only ten-years-old and a late bloomer who’d only just come into his third molt over late winter, wearing his new and glowing skin with pride and strutting around in front of Anthony. And Anthony indulges him – he flares his nostrils and brushes the back of his hand over Kyle’s cheek and stands far too close—

Kris, because his suppressants have obviously failed him, sees red and, before anyone in the clubhouse can blink – he’s put himself between Kyle and Anthony and he _looms_ , his eyes flashing a reflective silver-red, the skin of his neck pulsing and shifting as his other eyes blink open; the lights flicker and dim and the shadows of Kris’s multitude legs are cast long and dark against the floor and walls – the length of them stretching the room wide.

Immediately, Kyle shrinks in on himself and backs away quick – his palms out-stretched and his wrists and their life-force veins presented at Kris in an ultimate act of supplication.

Kris ignores it and continues to advance on Kyle.

Then he feels Anthony’s hands around his waist and Anthony’s teeth at his neck and that’s all he gets before the medics are swooping in around all three of them – brandishing their needles filled with fast-acting suppressants.

 

 

Kris wakes up groggy and only slightly embarrassed in one of the recovery rooms at Wrigley.

People have been writing for decades about how arachnids needed to be phased out of professional sports because the cost of them – the suppressants, the _volatility_ , the short careers – far surpassed the benefits of them – charm, marketability, and, above all others, winning records.

But Kris loves baseball – he does. He loves Chicago and the fans and the history of Wrigley itself. And he had been _ecstatic_ to shove all of the negative comments down those people’s throats with a curse-breaking World Series win on a team that led the league in the number of employed arachnids: himself, Anthony, Schwarbs, and Javy. Of the four of them, Anthony was the only sire while Javy was already mothering his third brood.

Kris’s phone is beside him and it’s blinking with an unread text from Joe that just says: _Stay where you are until we can get the suppressant situation worked out._

So, Kris stays where he is and the medics work the situation out and the next time he sees Kyle they’re both apologetic and maybe still a little doped up as they hug and hold onto each other.

Kris doesn’t see Anthony for a week.

When he does, Anthony’s eyes are hollowed out and cold and there’s the slightest shake to his hands and it _breaks_ Kris to see Anthony humbled so. And when he reaches out to Anthony – tries to regain some of that distance that’s suddenly come between them, Anthony barely responds.

During games, Anthony’s HBPs goes up and up and Anthony never even flinches. So Kris resolves to keep himself under control – if he could do that, if he and Kyle could do that – then Anthony’s own suppressant dosage should be allowed to decrease and Kris could have him back.

It’s a plan.

It’s a _good_ plan, even.

And it lasts up until the end of the season, when Kris is on the plane back to Nevada and settling into his seat and steeling himself for takeoff when he feels fingers interlace with his. Kris jolts and whips his head around and he chokes down on a scream as Anthony leans in close, pressing his nose to Kris’s neck and simply _breathes_ him in.

 

 

When the plane lands, Kris doesn’t go home – instead they go to an arachnid sanctuary, one of the few left in the country, and they don’t talk about it. Not out loud. Not when everything that either of them want to say can be read in their scents – their suppressants having long since been burned out of them in those last few brutal games.  The drive over and check in to the sanctuary is a blur that only slows once he and Anthony have settled into their room.

Kris is bigger in both forms, but Anthony is still stronger as he pins Kris with just his body weight and fucks him hard and deep and agonizingly slow.

It’s their first time and their last time when Kris feels Anthony finally coming, filling Kris up with a broken sob. A few more desperate thrusts and Kris feels the mating plug beginning to harden, it’ll keep Kris closed, securing Anthony as the only sire to Kris’s first brood (and second and third and, Kris prays, fourth and fifth).

Anthony has just enough time to drop his fangs into the meat of Kris’s shoulder – breaking off one of them – before Kris’s instincts take over and Kris’s own teeth sharpen and he bites down again and again, ripping and tearing into Anthony. Anthony’s screaming and thrashing doing nothing but pushing Kris harder as he tries to end it quickly, aiming for the throat and gulping down the nutrient-filled blood even as a clawed leg slashes deep into Anthony’s thighs – aiming, and hitting, the femoral arteries.

 

 

The sanctuaries were more like half-way houses. When a couple checked-in, there were forms to fill out that would give the sanctuary power-of-attorney, allowing them to see to Kris and Anthony’s affairs – taking calls and messages and, to put it delicately, make certain _notifications_ – until Kris emerged.

The door to each room had a sign that could be adjusted to whichever of the stages the occupants were engaged in: courting, mating, weaving, waiting, hatching, nursing, or ready. Some arachnids skipped some steps, some took more time at certain steps than others.

Kris is still covered in blood as he changes the sign on his door from _mating_ to _weaving_.

 

 

It takes two days to consume Anthony’s insides – two days to break Anthony open, to crack his sternum and pry open his rib cage and eat his heart and lungs and stomach and liver and everything else to create the perfect amount of space for their brood.

On the third day, Kris begins weaving his egg-sac. He builds much of it on the inside of what’s left of Anthony – leaving an opening at the top of the sack he’ll need to deposit the eggs themselves when they were ready.

On the fourth day, the plug breaks and Kris finishes weaving.

On the fifth day, he positions himself and begins laying. He lays a hundred eggs in an hour and two hundred more in the next and another hundred in the next and then he stops counting. He’s panting and sweating and he’s _exhausted_ before he’s ready to weave the sac closed. Then, with a tug on a silky strand, Anthony’s eight legs curl around his hollowed-out torso to form a protective cage around the eggs. And, finally, Kris could rest.

It takes a month before Kris can hear the soft rustling of a million little legs rubbing and moving against each other. While he’s waited, he’s been feeding off of Anthony – making himself ration the meat of his mate. But he’d chosen well and there will be enough of Anthony to keep him full and sated well until their younglings were ready to emerge.

The second and third months pass swiftly and Kris spares hardly a thought for anything but his rapidly growing young. He gnaws on a tibia and passes a hand over the egg-sac, feeling it move and sway under his palm.

The fourth month and there’s less noise and it takes all of Kris’s will power to not prematurely open the sac and save _all_ of his younglings.

This was just the way of things no matter how much he disliked it – if he went against it, his slings would just be weaker for it and it wasn’t something he could risk, not with all that was sacrificed for them to get here. The thought of which makes Kris whine low in his chest as he presses a soft kiss to the withered skin of Anthony’s forehead.

Five months in and December’s just about over and there’s no meat left of Anthony to feed on when the sac breaks.

 

 

The sign on the door goes from _waiting_ to _nursing_ and soon, diapers and onesies are delivered every few days.

 

 

He counts them again.

Three daughters and six boys. Nine in all. He had himself the beginnings of his own little baseball team.

It was a smaller brood for an arachnid, but it was about right for what ran in Kris’s family.

“Welcome to the world, little ones,” Kris coos at each of them, wiping away webbing and old blood and leftover molt-skin from their chubby little faces.

When one of his daughters, who was the largest of all her siblings and so clearly amongst the first to have hatched, her arachnid’s legs not quite shifted and tucked away just yet, nips hard at his finger, Kris feels his chest swell as he gathers her fully to his chest.

“My darling,” he says, whispering soft endearments over and over as he rocks her back and forth, rubbing at her sides and gently nudging the legs to shift back under her skin.

He checks over them all, but he keeps coming back to the daughter who’d bit him. He knows he’s not supposed to have favorites – not this early – but already her instincts have kicked in and, avoiding anything catastrophic, Kris would hedge that it would be her who would be celebrating her first birthday. And, if the looks she was giving her siblings was anything to go by, she would be the _only_ one Kris would be buying presents for.

 

 

Kris stays out of the way as the slings war over what’s left of Anthony – they gnaw on the hair and the bones and the shriveled skin as he keeps himself apart from it all.

He still can’t help but smirk as his largest daughter wins any and all fights before her; and, holding her against his chest as she sucks the marrow from Anthony’s femur, Kris looks that beautiful girl in the eye and resolves that, should she make it to the end, he’ll call her _Antonia_.

 

 

 _Antonia_ does make it.

She and four more – one more daughter and three sons – but it’s Antonia who has Kris’s eye the whole of the way. She is wholly her sire’s child and it makes Kris’s heart ache that Anthony isn’t here to see her or any of the others. He wonders, not for the first time, what it’d be like to be human and to raise the slings _with_ Anthony.

Granted, were he human, he and Anthony would have been far more restricted in the reproduction area and would have been relegated to spending months and months of cutting through red tape for the mere _chance_ to adopt but maybe one child.

As an arachnid, Anthony may be gone, but he’s given Kris _five_ gloriously strong younglings. And more besides once Kris is ready to weave a sac again. Kris, if he plays it right, could live up into his forties, and if he were to lay a clutch every other year, he’d be able to get full use of his mating with Anthony.

And with that thought, Kris knows it’s almost time to go back into the world. He knows that there’ll be mixed reactions when he heads back to the Cubs – humans would always be uneasy about the arachnids’ family ways– but Kris thinks that as soon as his teammates meet Antonia and her siblings, things will be – not necessarily _fine_ – but they’ll be _okay_.

Assuring himself with a nod, Kris opens the door and changes the sign from _nursing_ to _ready_.

 

 

It takes a week to get checked out of the sanctuary and get supplies – diapers, a stroller, diapers, car seats, diapers, clothes, etc. – ordered and ready.

Antonia coos at Kris as he gets her buckled into the six-seat baby stroller, one hand in her mouth and the other grabbing at his nose. When her brother, seated next to her, reaches for Kris too, Antonia hisses at him and swats at his arm. Kris grins at them both, swiping this thumb over the boy’s cheek even as he presses a kiss to Antonia’s forehead.

Kris’s mom picks him up and he watches with pride as her jaw drops as she watches Kris walk out into the lobby of the sanctuary with five younglings. She herself had never had more than one survive from a nursing period and, out of six attempts, that had only happened twice – resulting in Kris and his brother, who were far enough apart in age that there hadn’t been any danger of one eating the other.

His mom greets him with a kiss to the cheek and a gentle hug and a warning that Theo Epstein was waiting for him at home.

 

 

When he first meets Theo’s eyes – they’re hard and filled with anger (he had loved Anthony, almost as much as Kris had, and Kris knows that the loss would have hit him hard), but then they soften as they land on the slings in the stroller that Kris’s mama pushes into the room. They had been quiet for the duration of the car ride, but soon Antonia and her brothers are cooing and gargling at first their grandparents, then Theo himself.

Theo can’t seem to help the wide smile that cracks across his face as he lets Antonia grab his fingers, then his nose and cheeks and hair.

“It’s early days yet,” Kris says, watching as Theo gently disentangles himself from Antonia’s grasp, “but she’s the one most likely to make it.”

Theo nods as he stands, scrubbing a hand over his face before he says, “Everyone warned me about what would happen – keeping a sire and a breeder on the same team for too long.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kris says, averting his eyes away from Theo and instead looking at one of his sons, who at the eye-contact lifts his arms up in a gesture indicating that he wanted to be picked up and held. Kris obliges. “It wasn’t your fault,” Kris says again, once he’s got the boy in his arms and his nose in the boy’s thick black hair, “it’s been building for a while and it was going to happen one way or another. There was nothing you could do.”

Theo sighs.

“Maybe,” he says. “Just know that there’s been talk about restricting the contact between contracted arachnids during the off-season.”

Kris nods, says, “I figured.” He doesn’t say _I’m sorry_ or _maybe there was another way_ or any of the other platitudes Theo may have been hoping for.

“Kris.” There’s a note of earnestness in Theo’s voice, something that _makes_ Kris look at Theo – and in Theo’s eyes, Kris sees nothing but understanding. “Kris,” Theo continues, “I’ve talked with everyone on the team – from the players and the coaches and the staff, _everyone_ – you’re still welcome. Yeah, it might be a little awkward at first, but, like you said, this was something that’s been a long-time coming. I think that, on some level, we were all ready for it.”

Theo puts his hand on Kris’s shoulder, gives him a little shake.

“It’s okay.”

And something inside of Kris breaks, just a little, because, yeah, this had been the natural order of things and Kris had been ready to defend his and Anthony’s decision until he was blue in the face – but there was a small part, a part of Kris that Kris hadn’t been wanting to acknowledge that he had been worried about how the humans would take this. This wasn’t the NFL or the NHL – the humans ruled the MLB with an iron fist, they wanted to see long careers that weren’t marred with mating deaths or weeks off to care for a brood. And speaking of.

“Just so you know,” Kris says, “this won’t be my only brood with Anthony.”

Kris doesn’t have the chance to explain the rest of it because Theo’s suddenly hugging him tight. Theo pulls away and he holds Kris’s face between his hands and says, “Please promise me that they’ll be baseball players. _Please_ , Kris.”

And Kris finds himself laughing and nodding his head and saying, “If that’s what they want. Of course, Theo.”

 

 

The slings grow fast, just as all slings do.

One more of the boys succumbs to Antonia, and another to one of his brothers but that’s it before a year has passed and Kris is welcomed back into the clubhouse with awkwardly open arms and faint praise that quickly grows earnest once his teammates meet the slings.

After that year mark has passed, Kris names the remaining boys: Billy and Ernie – after Billy Williams and Ernie Banks – in the hopes that they’ll have the same fortuitous careers as their namesakes.

There’s a different future waiting for Antonia – she won’t have the same stereotypical glory as her brothers, not in The Show, at least, but as she grows, she develops a particular adeptness at reporting and breaking down the game. She excels in math and mechanics and it’s not long before she gets herself situated in the analytics world.

At five years old, she has a job as a Cubs scout – one of the youngest, even amongst the arachnids.

And Kris? Kris just keeps playing.

 

 

Kris weaves a second and third sac, fertilizing eggs from his mating with Anthony – from them, he gets three and five younglings respectively and raises them all to prominence within the baseball community.

Some call it a dynasty, others (humans) call it a tragedy.

Kris simply calls it family.

 

-z-

 

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Last of this year's horrorthon! Thank you so much to everyone who has kudosed and commented <3


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